Tag Archives: Gulf of Mexico

(Receding Floodwaters Bury Deep-sea Oil)

Dr. James J. S. Johnson

And the waters returned [i.e., reversed] from off the earth continually [literally “continually going and returning”]; and after the end of Day 150 the waters were abated [literally “unfilled”, i.e., drained, lacked or lost fullness]. (Genesis 8:3)

No one should be surprised when global geology data match the Bible’s record of the Genesis Flood, because true science corroborates Scripture.(1) To illustrate, Genesis 8:3 is now corroborated by petroleum geologists’ stratigraphic data gathered from 1544 widespread data points, located across huge landmasses in North America, South America, and Africa.(2)

Highlights of the Flood’s catastrophic history are reported in Genesis chapters 6-9.

After 40 days and nights of unprecedented rainfall, combined with “the fountains of the great deep [being] broken up”,(3) worldwide oceans rose (“increased”), and rose more (“prevailed and greatly increased”), and rose even more (“prevailed exceedingly”)!(4)

Eventually floodwaters overwhelmed (“covered”) what were then Earth’s highest mountains, with 15 cubits to spare.(4) The catastrophe’s zenith occurred at day 150, after which flooding reversed, thereafter actively receding until the deluge drained and landmasses dried out.(5)

Whopper Sand Puzzles Evolutionist Geologists!

That pivotal reversal left its marks all over the world’s stratigraphic rock layers, one example of which is “a large, unusually thick and extensive sand body in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico [7,600—10,000 feet deep!] … so large and completely unexpected that the oil industry dubbed it the ‘Whopper Sand’.”(2)

Whopper Sand [is] a result of this rapid drainage shift at the Zuni/Tejas (K-Pg) boundary, when water suddenly began to drain off the North American continent … into the GOM [Gulf of Mexico], permanently reversing the earlier direction of flow. This shift is marked by the sudden change in deposition from the uppermost Zuni layer (the Lower Paleocene Midway Shale) to the lowermost Tejas (Paleocene-Eocene Whopper Sand). In a Flood model, this would coincide with the change in water direction described for Day 150+ of the Flood.(2)

However, “from the end of day 150” (literal Hebrew in Genesis 8:3) a remarkable reversal (“return” of floodwaters) occurred, followed by continually widespread and explosively powerful drainage dynamics.

Initial drainage rates in the Paleocene, coinciding with a sudden drop in sea level at the onset of the Tejas, were likely high volume and highly energetic, providing a possible mechanism to transport the thick Whopper Sand into deep-water. Over time, the drainage volume lessened, lowering the energy available for transport, until the present-day pattern developed.(2)

If this is a post-Flood deposit, what local catastrophe can explain this massive sand unit? … [T]he size and scale of the Whopper Sand is beyond any deposit like it in the world. The erosive power to produce this much sand and to transport it so far would have likely affected most of the contiguous [lower 48] USA … making it nearly impossible for animal and human survival. As described above, the best explanation for the Whopper Sand is at the onset of the receding water phase of the Flood.(2)

If oil companies had informed earlier Gulf of Mexico explorations with Flood geology insights, rather than uniformitarian assumptions, they could have found the Whopper Sand formation (and its billions of barrels of oil!) much earlier than they did.(6)

Thus, not only can careful research corroborate facts reported in Genesis, sometimes using Scripture-guided science can lead to billions of dollars in undersea oil!(2),(6)

(6) Misidentifying “where” the Flood/post-Flood reversal occurred, as indicated in the world’s geologic sedimentary rock stratigraphy, has been used to promote evolutionary “saltation” notions, recently, by theistic YEE (young-earth evolutionist) Kurt Wise, as recently exposed by Dr. Tim Clarey. See Tim L. Clarey’s CRSQarticle cited above (in Footnote #2), especially at pages 102 (“Regardless of whether it is 100 years or 300 years, this timespan severely limits the amount of catastrophic activity possible and the number of generations possible, especially for the largest mammals. Recently, [Kurt] Wise … has even used this limited amount of time to justify major evolutionary jumps, which he calls saltation, to explain the Cenozoic mammal record”) & pages 113-114. This alarming example of theistic evolution advocacy (by Kurt Wise) is aptly addressed by Dr. Clarey, on pages 113-114, as follows:

“Advocates for a K-Pg end of the Flood must assume all Paleogene and Neogene (Tejas) deposition occurred in this timeframe. For this reason, Wise (2017) has proposed evolutionary saltation to explain the mammal fossil record in the Cenozoic. Essentially, [Kurt] Wise is suggesting evolutionary changes at the species level and above, from one generation to the next. Surprisingly, this is more rapid evolution that that being proposed by most secular scientists.

Wise (2009, p. 143) has even proposed whales may have evolved after the Flood, and that “vestigial legs and hips in modern whales confirm legged ancestors of the whales existed only a short time ago. Wise (2009, p. 144) has concluded that ‘mammal taxa which lack a fossil record from the Lower Eocene or before can be understood to have arisen after the Flood as subtaxa of ark kinds.’ Wise (2009, p. 136) has also pointed out that ‘44% of living mammal genera have no fossil record at all.’

However, just because the fossils of living mammals do not appear until later in the Cenozoic does not prove they ‘evolved’ after the Flood. Alternatively, this same mammalian pattern could be explained by ecological zonation, where many of the living mammal genera may have been living at the highest pre-Flood elevations, and therefore, were buried later. The Bible states that the Floodwaters prevailed 15 cubits upward of the highest hills (Gen. 7:20) and buried the cattle also, along with everything that creeped upon the Earth, including mankind (Gen. 7:21-23). Fifteen cubits (about 22-30 feet) likely did not provide sufficient depth for sediment to accumulate and make fossils on the highest elevations. The result would be a bleak to non-existent fossil record, similar to that of humans. This may help explain why so many living mammal genera are non-existent in the fossil record and/or appear later in the Cenozoic only.

Furthermore, advocates for a K-Pg Flood/post-Flood boundary have claimed the areal distribution of sedimentary rocks shifts from a more continental scale to a more regional scale at the end of the Cretaceous (Austin et al., 1994). And they have argued that water current directions, recorded in ripple directions, support this shift in pattern, going from large-scale continental flow to scattered, local-scale flow (Wise, 2009). However, the claim of a more localized distribution of the sedimentary rocks above the K-Pg (Tejas) primarily applies to the American West (Fig. 8), where disruptions in flow in and around the Rocky Mountains are to be expected, and is not observable on other continents like Africa and South America (Figs. 9 and 10).

Likewise, the claimed discontinuous nature of the current data above the K-Pg boundary also primarily applies to western North America where the Rocky Mountains were being actively uplifted in the early Cenozoic. The Rocky Mountains are also unusual in their wide swath across the North American continent. Other continents, like Africa and South America have more narrow (Andes Mountains) and/or more limited post-Cretaceous uplifts.

Finally, and in contrast to the claim of Wise (2009, p. 130), an examination of Art Chadwick’s (2001) current data does not show a clear shift in pattern “from consistent basin-ignoring transcontinental direction to scattered, basin-centering directions” below and above the K-Pg boundary, respectively. … [Chadwick’s 2001]data show a fairly scattered, non-uniform pattern existed from the Lower Cretaceous right on through the Cenozoic. Indeed, Chadwick (2001) himself noted that the trends in Paleocene rocks were consistent with the trends in the Upper Cretaceous rocks. The change from a more transcontinental flow pattern across North America to a more scattered pattern occurs much earlier in the Flood record, closer to the Mesozoic/Paleozoic boundary (Chadwick, 2001). However, as noted above (Fig. 3), there does appear to be some evidence of a major shift in drainage direction across the USA near the base of the Tejas megasequence.

The tremendous amount of Cenozoic sediment cannot be easily dismissed as the product of local catastrophes as previously suggested. There is too much volume globally, and the timeframe of 100 years precludes a post-Flood explanation. These sediments, and the fossils they contain, are better explained by the receding water phase of the Flood. Maintaining they are post-Flood as some creationists [or theistic evolutionists professing to be “creationists”, such as YEE saltationist Kurt Wise] claim, and deposited by some as of yet poorly described and unknown types of catastrophes, leads to evolutionary hypotheses beyond that of most secularist scientists.”